sky. He could see, for the first time now clearly, her

"We have to do a good deal of guess-work here, because we cannot get hold of just the statistics we want. Still, we have some good statistics--and I will use those for a test.

"You say that of the 1500 Austrian textile factories, 800 use the jacquard. Then we will guess that of the 4,000 American factories 2,000 use the jacquard and must have our No. 2.

"You say that a middle-sized Austrian factory employs from 20 to 3o designers and pays them from 800 to 3,000 odd florins a year--(a florin is 2 francs). Let us call the average wage 1500 florins ($600).

"Let us apply these figures (the low wages too) to the 2,000 American factories--with this difference, to guard against over-guessing; that instead of allowing for 20 to 30 designers to a middle-sized factory, we allow only an average of 10 to each of the 2,000 factories--a total of 20,000 designers. Wages at $600, a total of $12,000,000. Let us consider that No. 2 will reduce this expense to $2,000,000 a year. The saving is $5,000,000 per each of the $200,000,000 of capital employed in the jacquard business over there.

"Let us consider that in the countries covered by this patent, an aggregate of $1,500,000,000 of capital is employed in factories requiring No. 2.

"The saving (as above) is $75,000,000 a year. The Company holding in its grip all these patents would collar $50,000,000 of that, as its share. Possibly more.

"Competition would be at an end in the Jacquard business, on this planet. Price-cutting would end. Fluctuations in values would cease. The business would be the safest and surest in the world; commercial panics could not seriously affect it; its stock would be as choice an investment as Government bonds. When the patents died the Company would be so powerful that it could still keep the whole business in its hands. Would you like to grant me the privilege of placing the whole jacquard business of the world in the grip of a single Company? And don't you think that the business would grow-grow like a weed?"

"Ach, America--it is the country of the big! Let me get my breath--then we will talk."